There will always be a monk shortage as long as the game is balanced to give monks the primary beneficial healing capabilities. The only thing that comes close is Necros with Well of Blood / Power, which is conditional (a corpse is required).
That said, things change one step at a time. Myself and a few other Blood Necros have been proving the value of having Blood Ritual / Blood is Power, and now groups are starting to ask for that. Or at least the monks are...
It took some time before people discovered trapper grouping, too. I sat in on one and it was like a giant squid / beetle bug-zapper -- a sight that has to be seen at least once. Doesn't work as well with only one trapper in a party though and certainly doesn't translate to the open plains of FoW.
Protection/Smiting solo builds are simply one of the more recent developments. Old tricks from PvP find new life in a new application. There seems to be a lot of interchange between what becomes popular in PvP, even though the objectives are very different and the trends don't always coincide. But as with PvP, trends change, and soloing will lose its allure.
2-man smites can clear out UW, but could they successfully complete all the questing or do a realistic Gwen search party (presuming that a certain quest or number of quests need completion to make this available)? I keep thinking that there's an awful lot of doors visible in UW with no other apparent purpose than to be opened somehow.
Maybe when enough people become curious enough to start adjusting their builds for that, we'll see the next "frustrating" wave. But each change adds a little more diversity.
